Tuesday, 10 March 2015

Records on the move... by Lorna Stewart

Last pallet being loaded on the lorry in Edinburgh

As we've reported here before our two offices in Scotland are being united at one single site in Edinburgh. In the Spring of 2016 The Lyell Centre will be the new home of BGS in Scotland and preparations are already well underway. Here Lorna Stewart, Records Manager, tells us about the latest activity...

Following months of careful indexing and scanning the first delivery of Records from Murchison House left Edinburgh on Monday 9th February for relocation to Keyworth.

Records staff still smiling after a hardday of re-shelving the records in their new home

For the past 18 months the Records Team at BGS Murchison House have been preparing the records for transfer, some collections have been scanned and all have beenmeticulously indexed to ensure that they remain accessible. Where there is no existing scanned image a Scan on Demand Service will be available. Records and Reprographics staff at BGS Keyworth had in the meantime prepared the top floor of the Publication Store (V block) to receive the material.

Each folder and container is barcoded and is associated with the barcoded shelf location at Keyworth to make sure that they can be quickly and accurately retrieved when requested.

The respective Records Teams managed the physical handling at either end of the operation; happily the weather was on our side and all 49 pallets were unloaded and undercover by the end of Tuesday morning.

Records happy in their new home

By Wednesday afternoon all of the 3,000 boxes and files had been shelved and the database updated with their new locations. Massive thanks is due to all staff who helped in the process, it bodes very well for the next 12 months or more of work ahead. Lorna

[The BGS Communications team have also just published the latest YouTube update from The Lyell Centre site, see below.

Heriot-Watt have also announced on their website some major donations to the Lyell Centre development from two leading philanthropic charities.